1) Someone in Barnes B used to enjoy putting live mice into the terrapin tank and crowds would gather to see the gruesome sight of mice being eaten alive.

2) Mark Dawson (I think) used to take me to the barn up at Sharpenhurst, before it burnt down, and he would collect what looked like bird excrement and carefully take it apart with his fingers to find beautiful and extremely delicate birds skulls. The Poo was actually some stuff that owls regurgitate.

3) Roger Highfield used to collect "MOFFS" as he put it and gas them in a killing jar before pinning them proudly among his collection.

I had 2 hobbies:-

1) Walking past Weston's farm to the dump where I found fantastic treasures including a huge 1930's Stentorian loudspeaker, a lovely inlaid mahogany early Victorian clock, and a box of Chanel perfume samplers, among other things.

2) Talking to cows. I got caned for doing this during a football match. The punishment didn't work; I still fall asleep if football is on the TV.

On my UF, one of the girls in my year in my house decided to bring her pets back to school one term and kept them in the Upper Dorm under her bed. This was when the senior girls were upper dorm in cubicles. Her pair of white mice regularly appeared out of her pocket during lessons.. I think one escaped in the Rich's Lecture Theatre... Understandably the dorm cleaner got a bit upset by the mice. But worse - we all got upset when her stick insects escaped. The blasted things got everywhere.

Deb GP wrote:On my UF, one of the girls in my year in my house decided to bring her pets back to school one term and kept them in the Upper Dorm under her bed. This was when the senior girls were upper dorm in cubicles. Her pair of white mice regularly appeared out of her pocket during lessons.. I think one escaped in the Rich's Lecture Theatre... Understandably the dorm cleaner got a bit upset by the mice. But worse - we all got upset when her stick insects escaped. The blasted things got everywhere.

I like your story. My housemaster in Barnes B when it was a junior house (ages 11 - 13) decided to let kids keep pets and before he knew it there were a mass of hamsters, mice, fish, and terrapins - I got my hamster to mate with, I think, Paul Pennicott's and 13 babies were produced - all had to be housed by boys in the house and the poor housemaster, a wonderful, kind teacher called "Bwana" Goodall started to regret letting us have pets, especially when the rather testy matron said she found it difficult to sleep with all the squeaking wheels the rodents ran round all night!

Don't know whether this counts......maybe need a thread on the generally wierd........

anyway, who recalls a couple of blokes who were in Lamb A, I believe in the mid 70s, one of whom had blonde hair, a limp and tended to wear army gear as much as possible, including some sort of scarf........anyway, their weird hobby, or was it just a myth? was going out on Big/Little Side after dark and hurling a sheath knife randomly up in the air and ........